Returning villagers brave hidden dangers

IN the small village of Baghluja just outside Dohuk, returning families, mostly Christian, have braved their lands again after not only being thrown from homes by Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 1990s but after having recently discovered their fields were riddled with unexploded bombs.

Mayor Sada Gorges stands outside his modest home talking to his grandson in the afternoon sunlight, his boots freshly caked in mud after coming from his fruit field.

Baghluja was closed down until last year while MAG, with Irish Aid funds, cleared fields of lethal devices.

Gorges says: “Before the clearance the land was contaminated and we were afraid to access or plough it, especially after seeing two people get killed [by a cluster bomb]. We’ve more money after the clearance as we can plough the land and sell more crops.

“Some [bombs] will go off and some won’t. Some people used to pick them up and play with them, others landed on soft ground and near rivers and didn’t go off.”

MAG prioritises areas for clearance, ones agreed with the government, so that houses and villages can be rebuilt on lands that were no-go areas for years, except for nomads and shepherds.

However, some villages in Dohuk were mined in recent years by insurgents fighting Turkish troops on the northern border while others in the region still have hidden explosives in their soil after US airstrikes on Iraqi military positions in the 1990s.

Irish-funded deminers are clearing one site at Jirwan, an old village outside Dohuk and a popular picnicking area for families where the ruins of the oldest aqueduct in the world lie.

Deminers are paid about $720 (€560) a month, the same as a government clerk, but pressure is mounting from the private sector, where wages are over $1,000 a month for similar work to clear lands for commercial firms.

Dohuk MAG field operations manager Wyria Mustafa says: “Before, with Saddam and the Baathists [his ruling party], they were a killing machine and were more powerful than al-Qaida. He acted like a god and was more powerful and controlling than [former Libyan leader] Gaddafi.”

“People used to in the 1990s, and sometimes still do, take out the landmines and sell them in the markets or even just as scrap metal.”

Mustafa says both Iraqi and Iranian armies doubled up on laying mines during their eight-year war, particularly planting the Valmara mine during retreats from battle.

Originally an Italian mine, the Valmara 69 or “the King” or “Jumping Jack”, has been known to kill 26 sheep in one blast and sends out over 1,000 steel fragments when detonated. It is the single biggest cause of landmine injuries in Iraq.

Picture: MAG ‘hurt locker’ specialist deminer Zana Amin, who has defused over 2,000 landmines, holds a defused anti-personnel mine in Sulaymaniyah, north east Iraq. Picture by Juno McEnroe

* This series was carried out with the help of the Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund, supported by Irish Aid